Script Studies #1 - Misinformation and Suspicion (feat. vaticidalprophet)
An Analysis of Drunkenness, Poison, & Other Misinformation Techniques
“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.” Despite this being the Marionette’s flavour text, it’s ironically untrue in Blood on the Clocktower. In a game where every good player has a unique ability, words aren’t all we have: the Empath knows their neighbours are good; the Slayer knows Emma isn’t the Demon, and the Undertaker knows that Josh is the Baron.
But if everyone could trust their information, it would make finding the Demon trivial. For example, if the Fortune Teller and Empath’s information align, you could be certain that you found the Demon and win as good very consistently. Even worse, if an evil player pretended to be a role and said something false, you could be sure they’re evil.
To solve this, Steven Medway and The Pandemonium Institute created characters that interfere with information, disable abilities, and sow distrust in the town. On Trouble Brewing alone, good players can seem evil in many ways. They can appear evil in the way they act, nominate, and vote; the information they yield; the information yielded about them; and the way they fight for survival. In my opinion, the Outsiders on Trouble Brewing each perfectly encapsulate one of these points, as they are designed to make good players look evil. Join me and vaticidalprophet as we explore misinformation, bluffability, and how to give evil a fighting chance.
Edit (13/Apr/2025): I thought I should start with a disclaimer. These posts are my opinions (despite me speaking all pretentiously and matter-of-fact-ly). This series is meant to be an intro to the theory behind what makes a “proper” Clocktower script. But like all theory, there’s a time and place to go against theory. Jazz is a great example of what happens when you defy music theory, but to make good jazz, you need to know the theory you’re ignoring. A similar phenomenon applies to script building. Let these posts serve as guidelines that, in time, you will learn to ignore.
Butler
"Each night, choose a player (not yourself): tomorrow, you may only vote if they are voting too."
Many people ridicule the Butler for being the most ‘boring’ Outsider on Trouble Brewing, or even in the entire game. While it may not be the most fun Outsider to play, it serves an important purpose: it encourages new players to study voting patterns. The main way to kill the Demon is by execution, so it can look really suspicious if the town is trying to get a player executed and the player who swears they’re good doesn’t vote on them, and the nominee doesn’t get enough votes. Who votes for whom is a critically underappreciated tool for game-solving, and a clever Butler bluff can let evil get away with egregiously not voting without seeming too suspicious.
The other part of Butler that’s often overlooked is the importance of choosing a good ‘Master’. If you choose an evil player, you can’t vote if they don’t want you to, and this can be a huge problem when only a few players live and you’re much more likely to choose the Demon or another evil player. If you choose a player who died (particularly if they died the night you chose them), you’re basically locked out of a vote that day, unless you can persuade them to either use their dead vote or raise their hand so you can vote, only to lower it after you’ve voted. This strategy is particularly effective if you have a trusted player (living or dead) immediately clockwise to you, so that they can lower their hand in time.
The Butler (and similar roles such as Zealot and even Ogre to an extent, but more on that later) justifies strange voting patterns and makes executions slightly harder to pass.
Drunk
"You do not know you are the Drunk. You think you are a Townsfolk character, but you are not."
The most popular character on custom scripts (and for good reason), the Drunk is the quintessential misinformation Outsider: your ability doesn’t work, but you don’t know it. The Drunk exists to hide evil players in two ways: by obscuring good players’ information, and justifying why an evil bluff is yielding wrong information.
An argument against the game that I hear quite often from new players is: “how are you supposed to use your ability if all the information could just be wrong and useless?”. This, of course, references the Drunk (and to an extent the Poisoner). New players will sometimes see these characters and assume that either it’s impossible to figure out who the Drunk is or, worse, that the Storyteller can just lie to anyone whenever they want (yes, Atheist exists, but if the player is struggling to grasp base game mechanics, they really shouldn’t be playing with Atheist). But what they don’t realize is that, at least on TB, no more than one player is the Drunk and no more than one player is poisoned at a time, and that’s assuming either character is in-play at all. In general, solving for the Drunk is quite simple in that you can start by assuming everyone’s information is true and finding where two pieces of information clash. For example, if you’re the Empath and you have two good neighbours, you should consider that you may be the Drunk if the Investigator thinks you neighbour the Baron and you nominated the Virgin without being executed.
That being said, there are times where the Drunk is a poor choice for custom scripts. Drunk works best when it’s solvable. If you have characters like Fang Gu, Godfather, or Sentinel, it can be hard or even impossible to tell if a Drunk is in play. I’ll save most of my thoughts on this for a potential Outsider modification post, but I’ll say Drunk works exceptionally well on TB because Baron adds 2 Outsiders at once, so you can always tell whether to be solving for the Drunk (or getting suspicious of Outsiders in case it’s evil bluffing). With ambiguous Outsider modification like that, good (and sometimes evil) can’t truly tell where the Outsiders are, or if they exist at all.
Recluse
"You might register as evil & as a Minion or Demon, even if dead."
If TPI ever changes characters on the base editions, I want them to change the Recluse’s flavour text to “Yes, but don’t.” because there is so many insane shenanigans you can do with this character, but really shouldn’t do. While the Drunk makes your ability malfunction, the Recluse makes other players’ ability malfunction when it affects you. The Recluse (and the Spy, but more on the Spy later) gives an explanation to suspicious information. Did Will’s Slayer ability actually kill the Demon, or was it just the Recluse? Did John the Fortune Teller actually find the Demon? Did the Investigator actually see a Minion?
While it’s almost impossible to get solid information on a Recluse, they’re way more likely to claim it publicly than a Drunk, who could go the whole game not even knowing. Furthermore, if someone does claim to be the Recluse, you know that info that assumes someone is an evil character is likely true, as the Recluse isn’t interfering.
Recluse can be incredibly damaging to the good team, causing the Investigator to not see a real Minion, or the Undertaker to make the town think the Imp was executed, or the Ravenkeeper to think they found the Demon. That being said, registration is confined to a single person (for now), which makes solving worlds considerably easier. When thinking of adding misregistration to your scripts, consider who the registration will frame. Want to frame a Townsfolk as the Demon? Add a Fortune Teller. Want to make players saved by a Pacifist less confirmed? Add a Spy. Recluse can open lots of worlds by directing suspicious info onto itself, but it doesn’t make known good players any less good. Using different forms of misregistration can make all sorts of worlds possible!
Saint
"If you die by execution, your team loses."
Ah, the Saint. Baby’s first Demon bluff, and for good reason; it makes everyone think twice about killing you. The Saint will fight tooth and nail to avoid execution as long as possible, even more than the Demon because the Demon usually has other ways out. As one of the defining characteristics of the game is that death is not the end, fighting so hard to live as a good player can be quite suspicious.
Giving good players an incentive to live longer helps mask evil’s secret desire to stay alive. While the Saint is an extreme example of this, there are plenty of ways to make people eager to live, or at least not be executed. Ongoing information roles (eg. Fortune Teller, Empath, etc.) are incentivized to stay alive as long as possible to get lots of information, even if they have to sacrifice some other good players. Characters like Ravenkeeper and Sage want to die at night, and will therefore be vocal about staying alive during the day. Once-per-game abilities like Artist or Fisherman can beg for one more day to maximize their info, but it could also give evil just enough time to carry out their plan.
These are 4 of the main ways to help evil blend in on Trouble Brewing, but there’s one more big mechanic I haven’t mentioned yet: madness. I love madness. Other misinformation sources change the way you vote or appear, madness is unique: it changes what you say. If you have been chosen by the Cerenovus, you feel compelled to lie, as an execution can be devastating. Sects and Violets has lots of powerful misinformation (the threat of Vortox can make solving the game quite difficult) and good players are already incentivized to lie (Outsiders don’t want to become the Fang Gu, the Snake Charmer wants to hide until they get info or become the Demon, etc.), but madness is the cherry on top. Both the Cerenovus and the Mutant offer players a simple choice: lie, or die. Madness lets you get away with so many incredible plays, and I think many Storytellers and players don’t utilize it to its full potential (my group included).
Choosing the same person as the Cerenovus every night (Cere-locking) completely shuts a player out of sharing their information. A Savant forced to be mad as the Clockmaker can completely eliminate a major source of information. An evil player—with some Storyteller co-ordination—can easily bluff Mutant by being made mad as a Townsfolk and suddenly claiming Mutant, getting executed. The real Mutant can’t out that or risk the same fate. The Cerenovus gets stronger over time, and can be crushing when only a few people live and the one living player with game-solving information can’t risk saying it, as the execution would end the game.
The Mutant is another wonderful Outsider, but requires some finesse to script-build with properly. With no other madness on script, Mutant double-claiming someone is very obvious, and the Storyteller is left in an awkward position: do you execute the Mutant, damaging town but confirming an Outsider, or do you let them live while everyone knows who they are, effectively removing their ability? While you can just execute them at an inopportune time, it’s usually quite obvious when a Storyteller tries this, and makes good more confident in their plans. Mutant pairs very well with Cerenovus, and will likely pair with other madness-inducing characters down the line. Regardless, it’s a great tool to spread misinformation through lies, when other misinformation is static and solvable, like on SnV.
Pixie is a bit different. Instead of being punished for failing to adhere to madness, you are instead rewarded for participating in it, gaining a dead Townsfolk’s ability if you can claim to be them. Pixie makes “double-claiming” much more acceptable and lets evil claim whatever they want. When that character dies, the evil bluffing Pixie is free to lie about the information they “received”.
Madness synergizes well with misinformation that doesn’t move, such as misregistration or constant effects like from the Vortox or No Dashii. When player’s have to make up false information, solving for whether or not these abilities are in-play becomes much harder (especially so compared to Poisoner in a Vortox game, for example).
Vat’s notes:
Madness is an interesting mechanic. Cerenovus is my favourite SnV minion to play, and my least favourite to play against. It requires some sophisticated STing to make it not “simultaneously oppressive and trivial”, and if you haven’t yet seen a game where it hits its ceiling, it’s not always obvious how it’s such a potent misinfo source.
Not everyone is going to love being under a mechanical madness effect, and scripts that use them should consider how to work around this. Mutant is a big offender — a lot of scripts have random mutants under an apparent assumption that players will go full method and choose to adhere to madness no matter what. On Mutant scripts without a Fang Gu (which provides strong incentive to play against your starting team) or a Leviathan (which makes it impossible to safely tank an execution), many players will just out mutant d1 and die either by their own hand or town’s. The role works best when it’s “half of a Politician”, and has a real carrot-or-stick mechanical incentive to jump through its hoops.
Some roles that aren’t under a mechanical madness effect are functionally madness roles. Politician is a social madness role (“if you are mad that a particular world is correct, and convince town of this, you win regardless of its accuracy”). It can be quite socially volatile, but if run with this vision, it’s actually easier to fit on scripts than Mutant — it does what many people put Mutant on scripts to do, without requiring as much support to work. Damsel is also a madness role (“if you are mad that you are the Damsel, your team loses”), but its losscon status can make it hard to work around and not always fun to play, especially without a Huntsman or Fang Gu to provide escape hatches. Both Politician and Damsel are madness roles for the purpose of script-building, but tend to be a little mechanically quieter.
Before signing off, I want to call special attention to the Poisoner. It’s the icon you saw when you clicked on this article and seems like the quintessential misinformation Minion, along with the Drunk. After all, it’s the most popular Minion on custom scripts1. That being said, the Poisoner suffers from an effect I like to call the Godfather Effect. Its namesake suffers from the same effect, but more on that in another article. The Godfather Effect is the phenomenon of beginner script-builders searching for a solution to a problem and adding a popular choice without understanding what makes it work. While the Poisoner is a great way to mess with abilities, it can be very hard to solve for when all Minions are quiet to the point where it is sometimes better to play exclusively judging social behaviour. Even worse, if all the Minions are loud (more on Minion volume another time) except Poisoner, it’s almost too easy to find outliers, as it’s immediately apparent that a Poisoner is in play. Most scripts that feature a Poisoner end up playing a lot like Trouble Brewing, so consider the implications before slapping it on every script and saying that your script has enough misinformation. Pixie and Drunk as the most popular Townsfolk and Outsider, respectively, don’t experience this as much, but remember that misinformation in a deception game should be hard to detect, but not completely impossible to solve.
Vat’s notes:
Poisoner is very kept in check by its home script. TB has only three ongoing info roles, which makes it harder for a poisoner to make a serious impact after night 1, and Investigator hard counters Poisoner if it sees one without its info being tampered with. On most customs, Poisoner is indefensibly strong. There’s almost no way to know if a Poisoner is in play or not, and the amount of havoc they can wreak on towns can make the game fully mechanically unsolvable with very little work. Scripts where town gets info like in SnV (mostly ongoing info) or BMR (mostly manipulation of game mechanics) cannot survive contact with poisoners.
It’s also a swingy minion. Misinfo roles tend to be swingy, but Poisoner has a nastily large RNG element to its swing.
Whether by tampering with information, stopping a loud ability, or simply making people act and talk suspiciously, in a social deduction game where both teams are super powerful, the evil team needs some help hiding from the good team’s sleuthing. A well-timed Cerenovus choice or Poisoner pick can set the evil team up for success. Misinformation is especially devastating when combined together, so having different types of misinformation can create deadly synergies. Regardless of how you do it, there should always be multiple ways to support the evil team, so as to add complexity to solving the game and to give the Storyteller multiple ways to keep the game tense all the way until the end. Generally, your script should be complex enough to have multiple explanations for events while also remaining solvable. While this takes some practice, it’s a skill that anyone can learn and will elevate your scripts to the next level. That’s all for now!
- Squ4ll
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